Colonist Won't Read

[DanDaMan]

I have a colonist who I want to skill-up in animal and have a book that allows that. Every time I force him to read the book, he'll put it down instantly and start doing something else. I tried removing all other tasks via the work assign menu and he is also beneath the skill cap for the book. Any ideas?

Relevant images: https://i.imgur.com/oa1HA5B.png & https://i.imgur.com/hmUZxnu.png

[Jaggid Edje]

Verify that his reading policy allows for reading the book in question.

Pawn's should be defaulting to the "Anything" reading policy, so if you didn't change it this shouldn't be the issue, but if you haven't double checked, you might want to.

Edit: Also just occurred to me that if you have had him reading often, he may be bored with it. Pawns get bored with any recreation activity that they do too often. You can see the pawn's current tolerance for reading by hovering over the "recreation" bar on the pawn's details.

[MadArtillery]

Probably boredom related

[VitaKaninen]

Pawns get bored of the same recreation type if they do it too much. Take away the books for a few days, and then give it back and they will probably want to do it.

Have a look at this screenshot where is shows their recreation tolerances.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3232144692

I think this is a mod called "better info cards" that shows me this info.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by VitaKaninen:

I think this is a mod called "better info cards" that shows me this info.

I get that info and do not use that mod, so it may be a base game feature.
Or just Rimhud alone adds it.

[Telerion]

Originally posted by DanDaMan:

I have a colonist who I want to skill-up in animal and have a book that allows that. Every time I force him to read the book, he'll put it down instantly and start doing something else. I tried removing all other tasks via the work assign menu and he is also beneath the skill cap for the book. Any ideas?

Relevant images: https://i.imgur.com/oa1HA5B.png & https://i.imgur.com/hmUZxnu.png

Reading is recreation, if the bar is full your colonist will stop reading. Boredom plays in your hands in this case, as the bar fills slower, meaning they have to read longer.
Let your colonists do there job and when recreation is low, force them to read the book. They will be less effective in terms of dayly base developing, but you get more time studying the book.

[DanDaMan]

Ah, thank you all for the replies! He wasn't bored of reading- seems I didn't realize reading skill books was still classed as recreation and his recreation is full.